Riverboat Gamblers

Yeah, I just do renovations and construction stuff. I just started doing that recently.

The contractor that I work for is helping to build his own house actually so that’s pretty cool. I did concrete scoring and staining and patch work for the first time so I’m learning all kinds of new shit, so it’s not bad.

I’m building stuff, that’s about it.

The title is a Frank Sinatra toast. It’s a toast that he did all the time. It was one of his favorites and it just seemed appropriate. It’s a very subtle nice way to say fuck you to any of the naysayers. It’s a very classy thing that he used to do but for the record it’s about a sense of the inspiration that is really in our lives. It’s a culmination of the past couple years of our lives with what we’ve been going through.

It’s loose connection, but in a sense it shows some of the throwbacks of being pigeonholed in this punk rock and roll like way. You feel this weird unintentional pressure to write the same record and we just didn’t want to do that.

It’s probably a little bit self-inflicted. When you’ve done really well doing a certain style, it makes it hard to deviate from that but who wants to write the same songs every record? Our songwriting is really honest. It’s not really conceptual. It’s just a collection of songs that we thought were our best songs at the time and we put them together.

It’s pretty chaotic. We all bring in everything that we have and will work through it in practice. None of the songs are the same as when someone first brought them in.

There’s not. It is more of a democratic communist regime. We all have an equal say in everything. We sit down and figure it out with anybody who has points to make. We’ll discuss it and come up with what we think is best for the band.

No, we haven’t done that since we were 15.

Yeah, Mike and I have known each other since 1993. I’ve known Patrick since 1995; Ian and I met when he was just 16.

Yeah, Mike and I had a couple bands together in high school. Then he and I started another band after a few of our members split from us. Patrick and I got together in a different band. But where we all grew up the music scene is very incestuous. We’re all friends and everybody’s in someone else’s band and you’re all in multiple bands at one time. At one point I was in three bands. Everyone in our tight group that eventually became the Riverboat Gamblers had similar but still different takes on music which made it interesting.

The MC5 thing was great, even with the missing members. It was weird and a lot of fun playing with these guys that you’ve loved for years. Unfortunately we only had a week with them but it was still awesome. They’re like really nice and approachable.

I have no idea because we’ve only been there but once. We could be the fucking Yanni of Europe. They might have forgotten about us by now. We don’t get too much word from them because we don’t have a lot of European ties as far as business. To be honest, some of the shows were hit or miss but the shows that were a hit were really fantastic especially in Holland, Germany and Sweden.

It just came out but our friends and family got really excited about it, because it’s Rolling Stone. It’s a huge thing for us so I was really excited to hear about that.

Yeah, that’s one of the most fun times I’ve ever played at Emo’s and that’s been our home base for our shows. It was a packed house and the crowd was really into it.

Technically it’s a three day tournament. There’s a show the first night and then two days of bowling tournaments. But really what it is, is an excuse for every label and every band who gets invited out there to have three nights of drinking and partying and being in Vegas.

Yeah, but didn’t because I had a bad thumb at the time. I hurt it right before we got to Vegas so I had to sit out but a friend with a better bowling average than me played which caused a little controversy. He stepped in for me and bowled while I just sat back and drank. It was actually a lot of fun. I think we came in around 42nd place out of 200 teams. It wasn’t too bad for our first time.

Yeah, we’re doing a Skate Rock compilation and we’ll be on Side One Dummy Warped Tour compilation. Also we’ve got a single in this Pirates Press box set of seven inch singles.

There are three of us that skate. I don’t skate like I did when I was 16 or 17 but it was a big part of our lives.

Yeah. That seems to be the big standout of the first record.

The thing is, back then we didn’t know any other way. We knew that it was very self-motivated but we didn’t have that stigma because all we’ve done our entire lives is get things together ourselves. Being from Denton, you’re not exactly in the spotlight of the music industry so we had to put on our own shows when the clubs in Dallas wouldn’t put them on for us. Patrick and Michael lived in two houses where we used to put on shows at all the time. We got in touch with our own people to get that first record out. We got Tim Kerr to produce the first two records. It was very much a circle of friends and we just did it ourselves out of necessity really.

It’s great. Those guys have been really cool. We just clicked right off the bat and they’ve had nothing but support for us with a lot of good communication.

Yeah, he did. There’s been a series of injuries in this band but I think that was definitely the worst. It was in San Francisco at the Parkside. We were playing a show and it was packed and really sweaty. Everybody was drunk and the floor was really hard to maneuver around there. Mike just threw the microphone back and right at the exact same time Pat put his head up and it knocked his front teeth out.

I’ve gotten popped in the head with a swinging microphone before, cut me over my left eye. I’ve hit Mike over the head with my guitar. Nothing is planned. Nothing is choreographed. We’re not like masochistic or anything. It just happens at crazy shows and when you get enough booze that’s when that happens. Mike has impaled his hand with a broken glass. Sometimes it gets out of hand but we’re trying to minimize the amount of emergency room visits.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck